I haven't heard anything but down-hillish stuff about Gentoo in a while.

FreeBSD itself is usually a painless upgrade unless you do something like 4.11->7.1. The -U switch to mergemaster even makes the tedious part fairly quick on routine upgrades. Handling third party software on the other hand can be a bother at times.

Generally unless things are to far out of date for your needs, have security issues that can be exploited, or bug fixes you need and or desire: there usually isn't any need to upgrade stuff very often. As the old saying goes, if it isn't broken, don't fix it.

Usually I upgrade things every month or so in related batches, just to keep pace with what changes. That way when something big does pops up in /usr/ports/UPDATING, there isn't a dozen of them piled up from last years laziness.... haha

Quote:

Originally Posted by AncientDragonfly

Thank you; I'm not new to technical stuff, just fairly new to compiling from source. I'm also pretty shy by nature, and hate to look like an idiot in public, even if y'all don't know who I am. lol, silly, I know.

Compiling from source can be tricky at first, because of the issues that can chrop up; unless you are used to developing in said environment (e.g. a hosted C environment), but most errors can be sorted with a little deductive reasoning and googling, even without knowing the underlaying parts. The aggravating part is when you know there has to be a logical reason, but can't find it. (usually a good time to take a short walk or play a few rounds of cards)

script configure failed unexpectedly. ( I *never* send a PR)
make build-depends-list (I alias that so I do not every have to type it:
..................................bdl maybe)
7 ports shown?
ls -lac /var/db/pkg/first-one-1.0
ls -lac /var/db/pkg/next-one-2.0
etc.
Usually the top lines of the output of the above will show you day of the most recent
(re)install of the port. You can /bin/rm -rf work
and start rebuilding the 7 from the oldest to the newest. 95 percent of the time
that *may* work.

Thank you! That was very helpful! It got me through most everything else, until...

If all else fails you can pkg_add (maybe 3 percent of your
installed ports) if the tbz or whatever exists.
............

I think I have everything back now (at least everything I use regularly) except Open Office. I may pkg_add it, or I may be brave and try to compile it back in.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TerryP

FreeBSD itself is usually a painless upgrade unless you do something like 4.11->7.1. The -U switch to mergemaster even makes the tedious part fairly quick on routine upgrades. Handling third party software on the other hand can be a bother at times.

I may be back for more help when I do the upgrade from 7.0 to 7.1, I've never been through a system upgrade on FBSD, and in Gentoo, the upgrades just rolled along, no one big update, as long as you kept up with your "emerge worlds," you were always on the latest version. That's what I liked about it.

Or I may take the chicken way out, and just build a new 7.1, and transfer my configs over where I can.

Quote:

Generally unless things are to far out of date for your needs, have security issues that can be exploited, or bug fixes you need and or desire: there usually isn't any need to upgrade stuff very often. As the old saying goes, if it isn't broken, don't fix it.

I'm afraid I'm a little more of the engineering mindset - if it isn't broken, fix it anyway (and in my case, apparently, fix it until you break it).

Quote:

Usually I upgrade things every month or so in related batches, just to keep pace with what changes. That way when something big does pops up in /usr/ports/UPDATING, there isn't a dozen of them piled up from last years laziness.... haha

I'm glad for UPDATING; with Gentoo, I had gotten into the habit of scanning through the forum before I did an update to see if other people were having problems with it. If they were, I waited, at least until someone came up with a fix.

Quote:

Compiling from source can be tricky at first, because of the issues that can chrop up; unless you are used to developing in said environment (e.g. a hosted C environment), but most errors can be sorted with a little deductive reasoning and googling, even without knowing the underlaying parts. The aggravating part is when you know there has to be a logical reason, but can't find it. (usually a good time to take a short walk or play a few rounds of cards)

Well, I'm not used to developing in any programming environment, but I did learn quite a bit through this experience and the helpful responses, so I thank everyone here who replied. One of the things I learned (though this was on my own) was that if the system's hosed anyway, don't be afraid to try anything that might fix it. 'Cause it's hosed either way! And I might be able to fix it.

I tried to add [solved], but could only do it for this post (it wouldn't let me edit the original title), so maybe a mod will come along and change it in the original.

Anyway, thanks everyone. I can't say I'll be a frequent poster, but y'all have a real friendly and helpful forum here. I used to read over on the old, defunct forum, and watched the move over here when the spam took it over. I'm glad this forum is here. My only complaint is that my login times out while I write, and I can forgive that.